EEstor passing Independent Tests

EEStor, the Cedar Park Texas based designer of supercapacitors, passed a milestone independent test by Texas Research International which certified that the purity of EEStor's powder averaged 99.92% purity. The purity of the chemicals is crucial for creating their economy-changing energy storage product.
If EEStor can create their supercapacitor at a decent price and having sufficient safety, the whole peak oil crisis will change.
Their energy storage device, not technically a battery but a capacitor, will make total electric cars feasible. They pack nine times the power of lead-acid batteries and can be recharged in minutes, although using special high voltage chargers, home recharging will take longer. As soon as some of these cars hit the market, our need for oil will start to lessen.
With the need and demand dropping, the price of oil should start declining. (Yes, yes, I know China and India - blah, blah, blah. But China and India aren't going to be buying a lot of oil at $130 a barrel once their governments stop subsidizing. They will be shifting to electric as well. China has a lot of coal and doesn't seem to be shy about burning it.
So, it's a happy thing that Eestor's product passed the test. Hopefully we'll see a real product demonstration from them soon.

Why the CAFE Fuel Standards Don't Matter Anymore

The US government passed the "Energy Policy Conservation Act" in 1975 which mandated a Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) for all a car makers products. The intent was to raise the fuel efficiency of cars.
Many electrons have been spilled in the blogosphere about how to reduce our dependency on foreign oil. The Republicans typically say, "Let's drill off-shore and in that big cold state up North." The Democrats say, "Let's just raise the CAFE standards." The current energy bill proposes a target of 35 mpg by 2020.
Well, the CAFE standards don't matter anymore. Here's two reasons why:
1. With gasoline at $4.00 a gallon, SUV sales are tanking already - down 50% this year. It doesn't matter what the CAFE standards are, people are buying more fuel efficient cars. In the last year the fuel efficiency of US cars has gone from 20.2 mpg to 24.4 mpg.
2. The plugin electric cars are coming. By 2020 the concept of miles per gallon will be moot. We will have gone electric. The pace of battery technology is accelerating and will provide a huge economic advantage to electrical cars. With new Lithium-Ion batteries and EEStor's super-capacitor, the trend will be towards electric cars. Chevy's over-hyped Volt and the Japanese plugins will get here in 2010. They will probably have the bugs worked out of them and be practical by 2015. By 2020 most passenger cars will be electric, trucks may take another decade.
So congress should quit wasting time about whether the CAFE standards should be 35 or 37 mpg in 2020, it won't matter.
What's the mpg of an all electric plugin car anyway?

China to Open Coal-To-Liquid Plants

According to the Guardian China is about to open the first of many Coal-To-Liquid plants. The technology is well understood and was used by Germany and Japan in WWII. The process will allow China to import less oil and save money. The estimated cost is 25-40 dollars in equivalent barrel terms.
A bad thing about the process is that it produces more CO2 than conventional oil.
This is why I thing the EnvironmentalGraffiti.com smears the technology calling it "Nazi Fuel" (we don't call the F-22 a Nazi-Jet, or the Saturn V a Nazi-Rocket).
Although it does increase CO2, a way to help supplement our energy is a good thing until we can get renewables online.

Why Oil will be $30 a barrel in 30 years

Ok, Ok, I know you don't believe me and it's heresy to say such things, but please read on.



In the US we use two-thirds of our 21 million barrels of oil a day for transportation.
If you believe the CIA factbook we import 58 percent of our oil. Let's see, if we do the math, that's 66 percent imported - 58 percent used in transportation, uhm, that gives us 6 percent left over.
The US would be self-sufficient in oil if we replaced the energy in our transportation sector with something else. If the US were self-sufficient in oil production, the price of world crude would collapse.

Any of the following, or more likely combinations of these, will make this happen:

1. Electric Cars. Electricity is much cheaper than gasoline to power cars. Electricity can be produced domestically in the US from solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, wave, coal, or nuclear. The problem with electric cars is the battery. Batteries today are too expensive, too heavy, and have too short of a life span. That is changing. If any of many competing successors to our current battery technology pan out, the electric car will replace a majority, but not all, of our petroleum-based vehicles. Things like supercapacitors from technology by MIT, GT, RPI, EEStor, or EPod, could easily make the electric car viable. Incremental improvements to our lead or Lithium batteries may work.


2. Shale Oil. Colorado has three times the energy of Saudi Arabia, but it's locked up in rock. Shell oil thinks it has a way to produce the oil for $30 a barrel.


3. Coal. Coal can be converted into liquid fuels for about $35 dollars a barrel. Germany, Japan, and South Africa have all done this. These technologies have not been pursued in the past because oil was so cheap. Who wants to invest billions in a refinery to make $35 oil when it may drop to $20?.

Many other technologies like cellulosic ethanol, biodiesel, methane hydrates may also work.

If OPEC will just keep prices high for the next decade, people will invest in these alternate technologies and eventually the price of crude oil will collapse.
Despite what all the "peak oil" supporters claim, these alternate technologies will force the cost of oil to be only $30 a barrel in 30 years.